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They got a nonexistent inborn-gender-identity as an entire chapter in the WPATH guidelines, which now recommends "gender-affirming-care" for it, based explicitly on the studies they did surveying their fellow posters on the forum! If your reaction is "this is unimportant because they are 3 people out of 4000", then this very event should show why that reasoning doesn't make sense.
An ideological milieu that only tolerates one side of an argument is fundamentally gullible to anyone who can invoke the automatically-winning side. Indeed, it will frequently come to the wrong conclusions whether this susceptibility is deliberately exploited or not, exploitation just increases the rate. It's the same dynamic at play whether the people determining WPATH policy come from eunuch.org or from Tumblr, whether they originally got into the idea for "want to feel special" reasons or "fetish" reasons or "social justice subculture" reasons, whether they consciously lie or believe their own bullshit. It's like if, for example, someone criticized the National Organization for Women for giving Mattress Girl their Woman of Courage award even after the text messages came out discrediting her rape accusation. And then you responded with "Sure it looks like she falsely accused him in retaliation for him breaking up with her and/or for the personal benefits, but NOW has 500,000 members, can you prove the majority of them share her motive?" Clearly they don't need to, the relevant members of their organization hold to a "Believe Women"/"Believe Survivors" ideology and so a single liar with sufficient skill at invoking the ideology was all it took. But instead of just being a response to a single incident, it's WPATH establishing a medical standard. And instead of being an openly non-neutral activist organization, it's the most prominent independent organization setting standards for trans healthcare, one that countless medical institutions listen to.
This then provides valuable insight into the validity of WPATH's decision-making processes, like knowing a medical/scientific organization wrote the conclusion of an argument first. And as I said in my other post, it also gives us valuable information about the processes of institutions that continue to take their recommendations seriously or "that would openly criticize something like a standard for prescribing chemotherapy if it was based on such dubious evidence, but stay silent when it's a standard for prescribing castration because of the political aspect". For instance, in the past few months medical authorities in Sweden, Finland, and the UK have issued recommendations against the use of puberty blockers for supposedly trans children, and to my amateur eye they have good reasons to. However, many other authorities like the American Medical Association have not. If a lot of institutions are making decisions on the subject are heavily influenced by social justice ideology, that is valuable information in judging this split. And yes, I already knew that so it's not going to shift my opinion very much, there's already been varying levels of other evidence like the mass-resignations complaining about ideological pressure a few years ago at the NHS's only gender clinic for children (since shut down as of a few months ago). But a lot of people think things like the shift to maximally "gender-affirming care" are just about following the evidence rather than ideological pressure and so this provides a valuable test case.
Based on your other post, I'm curious how you account for people desperate to castrate themselves if not some odd innate quirk, but we can set that to the side for the moment.
That's a fair point on the influence of those three, although it also depends on the broader argument you're trying to push. Is it that a significant fraction of WPATH and people pushing advocating for trans folks are pedophilic groomers who get off on child mutilation? Because that was the sense I got from OP, and I still largely don't believe that (although I'm open to more evidence). Moreover, only Johnson is listed as an author for the WPATH guidelines, not the other two (only cited). I'd wonder whether other people worked on it as well, editorial oversight, etc.
But your point that I was too dismissive of their influence is well taken.
I'll grant this too. I don't mean this as a gotcha, but what would you prefer instead? It seems unlikely to me that trans-skeptic (? not sure of the term) people will do gender studies for 6 years of a PhD in order to represent their side in professional organizations, and moreover, that conservative spaces are just as hostile an ideological milieu to any evidence that would purport to find benefits to accepting trans folk as their chosen gender (which I've seen cited numerous times; whether they actually hold water, I've never tried to figure out). I find it hard to believe that in some fantastical world where some unbiased body did publish such a study that conservatives would read it, shrug their shoulders, and the issue would die.
You might argue that I'm comparing apples to oranges by juxtaposing a body of PhDs and MDs with 'Cletus from Alabama' (as other people have said when making this criticism). But with the legislatures getting involved, Cletus be flexing his muscles whatever the eggheads at WPATH say and his opinion is making decisions in this arena.
Thanks for the links, and taking the time to lay out your argument. Appreciate it.
This is Kiwi Farms line, that is now official conservative line on which the "groomer" campaign is based.
https://kiwifarms.net/threads/eunuch-community.13954/page-4
Is this really all what is it all about? Is small group of people dedicated to one bizarre fetish really the greatest secret manipulators and masterminds in history?
David Cole from Takimag (someone known as Jewish Holocaust denier is not someone expected to be too woke) strongly disagrees.
https://www.takimag.com/article/doom-and-groomer/
...
Of course, they are talking about different people, leaders and common soldiers.
Still, why this particular fetish was normalized?
Follow the money. There is no profit out there. Look, for example, at furry fandom - even the most dedicated fans could not spend more than low four figures on fursuit, and exit is easy - just put your fursuit in wardrobe and let it here.
Transgenderism is for life, and it is unprecedented money maker for big pharma and big medicine.
If people were rationally following their interest, we would see them support T cause, and we do.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/billionaire-family-pushing-synthetic-sex-identities-ssi-pritzkers
https://archive.ph/XH5v5
These are the three sources of movement that changed the world.
This is a little hard to believe, because the "for life" parts (i.e., hormones) are generic medications and they're dirt cheap.
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